


Ludus/Pragma

by flyingwide



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, Married Life, Romantic Fluff, bad guys in love, or as close as these two get to it, spoilers for 160
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:20:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22961575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingwide/pseuds/flyingwide
Summary: Elias was fairly used to Peter showing up unannounced in his office. Usually, he’d only get a moment’s warning before Peter would appear, leaning a hip jauntily against Elias’s desk.“What do you want?” he asked when reality shivered for just a moment before cold blue eyes were looking down at Elias. Peter looked as he always did, wide with well-used muscles and hair white as sea salt. Elias remembered when it was dark, when it shone like mahogany in the sunlight. He liked him better now. Peter would look intimidating, Elias imagined, to anyone who didn’t know him. To those who did, his physique was the least concerning aspect of him.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas
Comments: 4
Kudos: 145





	Ludus/Pragma

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Champagne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Champagne/gifts).



> Happy Valentine's Day, friends!
> 
> Thanks to Lee for the beta. They fixed as much as they could, the rest is all on me.

Elias was fairly used to Peter showing up unannounced in his office. Usually, he’d only get a moment’s warning before Peter would appear, leaning a hip jauntily against Elias’s desk.

“What do you want?” he asked when reality shivered for just a moment before cold blue eyes were looking down at Elias. Peter looked as he always did, wide with well-used muscles and hair white as sea salt. Elias remembered when it was dark, when it shone like mahogany in the sunlight. He liked him better now. Peter would look intimidating, Elias imagined, to anyone who didn’t know him. To those who did, his physique was the least concerning aspect of him.

“What kind of greeting is that? You’d think I was intruding.” Peter held a wide hand up to his chest, feigning a deep pain residing there. Elias rolled his eyes.

“You are,” Elias said, deigning to look up at him. That sideways smirk was planted on his face and Elias was never entirely sure if he wanted to smack him or kiss it off of him. Still, this was his workplace and he had decorum. Mostly.

“Came to make a delivery,” Peter said teasingly. “I know I’m not as appealing as Hope and whatever the other one’s name is, nothing quite so fun as I-Do-Not-Know-You, but you’ll have to settle for me.”

“Will I?” Elias asked rhetorically. “What is this delivery?”

“An invitation.”

Elias arched a manicured eyebrow at him. “An invitation,” he repeated. Peter grinned. That never boded well.

“Absolutely. You don’t get out enough, stuffed up in this office, spying on your little minions.” Peter accompanied the words with a waggle of his fingers, gesturing towards the rest of the Institute. “I genuinely don’t know how you do that. Isn’t it boring? Well, except for the one. That Archivist of yours is going to break in half if you don’t feed him something, you know.”

“Jonathan is strong enough and none of your concern,” Elias told him curtly. Peter rolled his eyes but perched on the edge of Elias’s desk, bringing them almost level. He smiled that smile, the same smile that he’d had at 25 that had Elias leaning in despite himself. It spoke of risk and reward and Elias had always been a gambling man, in this lifetime and the last.

“Let him have a night away from all of this while you take one too,” Peter coaxed, voice honey-sweet. Elias raised an eyebrow at him, unimpressed with the saccharine.

“He has a habit of getting kidnapped,” Elias said drily. Peter gave him a look that spoke of his disbelief.

“Nothing to do with your designs, of course.” Elias ignored him steadily. “The other one can keep him company. The delectable little thing with loneliness rolling off of him. What’s his name again?”

Elias almost snorted. Of course Peter was fascinated. “Martin.”

“Martin. Such a sweet little thing. He’ll do well taking care of your boy, I think. And we both know how well I can take care of you.”

“As euphemisms go, you’ve done better,” Elias drawled and Peter grinned.

“Let me dispense with them then. I want to have you in every conceivable way before the Tundra sails to… Well. That would be telling. And I’m not sure I want your big eye poking around where it’s unwanted.”

He pressed a finger under Elias’s chin, tilting his face up to meet Peter’s. “Ah,” Elias said, unaffected veneer firmly in place even as he let his head be moved. “I suppose I can give you some of my time, though I had thought you’d deny yourself companionship to feed your god. That’s what you do, isn’t it?” He heard a slight bitterness slide into his tone and tried not to let it show on his face.

“Sometimes,” Peter agreed, pretending he hadn’t heard. “And sometimes it’s worse to have you and leave you. The heart is a finicky creature and I have to keep coming up with new ways to keep it aching. Or toss more fools into the fog. It is such a pain to find new crew members, though. And there’s enough heartache to be found in you and me to feed a god for eons. Either way, Forsaken gets fed and hopefully, so do I.”

“Euphemisms again? I thought you were done with-”

Peter cut off Elias’s words with his mouth, kissing him deeply to the point where Elias had to crane his neck and rise a bit in his seat to get closer. Peter was obnoxiously good at that. But Elias had known Peter for a very long time now.

Elias dragged his nails from the nape of Peter’s neck down to his collar just to hear Peter hiss. Peter bit his lip in reprisal and Elias laughed, a sound that started in his stomach and bubbled out of his throat. “Tease,” Peter accused even as he pulled Elias out of his chair to stand between Peter’s spread thighs. Peter was only a few inches taller but nearly twice as wide and Elias fit well between his legs.

“Of course,” he replied. “How could I not, after everything?” Peter kissed him again, taking a fistful of Elias’s hair in his hand and tugging tight. Elias let his hand trace up the outside of Peter’s thigh and smiled into his lips when Peter shivered. Eventually he pushed Elias back, disengaging them. He didn’t bother to fix his collar as it hung askew but Elias adjusted his tie and the lapels of his suit.

“I never should have told you, you sadist,” Peter said, a fond smile on his face.

Elias looked up, giving him an innocently blank look. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” He let his hand glide up Peter’s biceps to squeeze his shoulders and Peter shifted under his hands, smile growing. “My touch doesn’t have any significant weight, does it?” Elias dug his nails into the skin under Peter’s chin just to hear him gasp. “It’s not like it’s one of the last things you can still feel. Is it?”

“I know I’m a masochist but giving you a rod for my own back? Foolish.”

“It’s not the first you’ve handed me,” Elias reminded him, digging his nails in again. “And, as you said, you’re a masochist. I doubt it will be the last. And this one is such a treat. Knowing all those poor creatures you torment, even at their most powerful, can never make you feel what I make you feel? Knowing that I alone am what you have left?”

Peter ignored Elias’s words in order to grab at his left hand from where it was still wrapped around Peter’s throat. Catching Elias’s eye, they watched each other as Peter pressed a kiss to the ring there.

“Sentimental idiot,” Elias accused but let him do it. Peter laughed, dark with promise, as he pulled Elias in again.

Elias stared out of the wide windows at the sheets of rain came down between him and the grey streets of London. The glass of wine in his hand was a good vintage from Peter’s reserve but not good enough to hold his attention and the thumb of his left hand toyed with the ring on his third finger. It had been old even before Peter had placed it on his finger, murmuring words of tradition and stature while his mocking smile belied the words. It had never been about the tradition or who the ring had been passed down from or the thoughts of many happy returns. The ring was a symbol of the family, of who Peter was at his core, of who he served. The ring on Elias’s finger was a joining of all that Peter was: Elias held his heart but his family, his service, was his life.

“You’re not a Lukas,” Peter had told him once, “and I’d never ask you to be. I know Beholding would be loathe to give you up and you it. But I am Forsaken and always will be. ‘No other gods before Me.’”

“I don’t require you at my side always. I know your… constitution couldn’t take it,” Elias had replied, staring at the sapphires embedded in the platinum. “But you and I are you and I, regardless of… external demands. You wouldn’t like me to hold you down, even without the Forsaken. And I have my work to keep me occupied while you pine away.”

“Well, then,” Peter had said with a grin, taking up his glass of scotch and tilting it towards Elias, “to you and I.”

He pulled himself out of memories and turned to thoughts of the future. His blood sang at the idea of what was to come, what he himself would bring. He had his work.

A void appeared in the periphery of his awareness, a mere speck growing until Peter was at his side with a fuzzy wake left trailing through Elias’s mind. “You need a widow’s walk put in,” Peter told him, wrapping an arm around Elias’s waist and pulling him back into Peter’s chest. Elias let himself be moved easily. “It would suit you, waiting in the rain like a Victorian maiden for her sailor love to return.”

“It would clash with the lines of the building, this modern monstrosity you’ve had built,” Elias said placidly, no hint of recrimination in his voice. He didn’t know where Peter had been (though he had looked, as Peter knew he would) and had had no idea when he’d make port but he wasn’t unhappy his husband was returned. In fact, Elias would call himself pleased. Peter just hummed and held him tighter.

“I’m not done, you know,” Peter said eventually, looking around the room as if taking stock but maintaining his hold on Elias. “Gertrude may have delayed me, and Nathaniel may have hobbled me, but I’m not quite done yet.”

“Gertrude’s out of the picture now,” Elias reminded him, satisfaction curling around and through him like smoke. One more obstacle out of the way. Only a few left yet.

“Have I ever thanked you for that?”

“Hmm. I doubt it.” As if they wouldn’t both remember if that particular phrase had ever passed either of their lips in sincerity.

“Ah. Well. Maybe I’ll thank you when Nathaniel’s gone too,” Peter mused jovially.

“You really are bloodthirsty,” Elias accused fondly. He felt Peter’s one-shouldered shrug behind him.

“I’ve always been more hands-on than you. You ivory tower academic types, you don’t enjoy it like you should.”

“I enjoy being hands-on occasionally. When it counts,” Elias said lightly and he felt Peter grin against his neck.

“Yes. You certainly do.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you'd like to come yell at me about LonelyEyes or the TMA in general, I can be found on twitter at @berryreaction. Thanks for reading!


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